Basic research is intrinsically risky: looking at the history of science one may find many examples of unexpected discoveries as well as of many ideas that were assumed true at a certain point in time while later they were proven wrong. Among the first we find, in recent years, the discovery of high temperature superconductivity by Alex Muller and Georg Bednorz, of the Quantum Hall effect by Klaus von Klitzing, the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, and, more recently, the discovery of the graphene layers by Andrei Geim and Konstatin Novoselov.

Some see prosecutors’ investigation of a plant-disease outbreak as a witch-hunt. That’s not the case, says Francesco Sylos Labini.

On 18 December 2015, public prosecutors from the town of Lecce in southern Italy investigating the spread of the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa in olive trees placed nine researchers from local institutions under investigation.

The prosecutors are investigating charges ranging from negligent spread of a plant disease, environmental negligence, falsehoods in public documents and dispersion of dangerous substances, to the destruction of natural beauty. Judges also halted containment measures, which included the felling of infected trees.